


Skin A Bit Thicker Than Before

by inkhead



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 21:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkhead/pseuds/inkhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel can’t clearly remember the first time he took mind-altering drugs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin A Bit Thicker Than Before

Castiel can’t clearly remember the first time he took mind-altering drugs. That wasn’t their intended purpose, but that’s what they did. The memory is blurred, not by intoxication, but by the sheer, blinding pain of his wings dying, eating their own energy, without heaven to sustain them, and no-one with the power to rip them from his metaphysical flesh. 

He’s healed now, though, atrophied to nothing more than a slightly meta-sensitive human. There’s no medical excuse for the handful of pills that he holds cupped in his lap, not even withdrawal, with the way he’d been weaned off of his painkillers. 

His hands are sweating, something he isn’t quite used to. The pills are getting a little damp, their powdery edges becoming soft. 

These were never intended for physical pain. 

But Dean doesn’t touch him any more, doesn’t fucking  _look_  at him, not since Bobby, not since Detroit and Sam, not since Cas’ mojo ran out and his vast system of knowledge became inapplicable. 

There’s a small stack of books to Cas’ right, a few inches from his knee. A slap dash of knowledge scavenged from where ever he can find them, whenever it’s practical. None have anything useful for the zombie-apocalypse their lives have become, so most are discarded after reading, but there are a few Castiel keeps in his bag even as they move between broken down houses and ex-motels. 

The pills aren’t medical, but they’re painkillers all the same.

Castiel flops backward onto the thin, grubby mattress, and brings his hand up to tip the pills into his mouth. 

And  _there_  it is, the only good feeling he remembers from before, at the point before his memories swim into blackness.

His skin buzzes, and he has no-one to touch it, but that’s alright, Cas has hands, and he’s learned to be quite the self-sufficient little human nowadays. 

The drugs tug at the corners of his mouth, and he twists around to feel the stretch in his back, as the slight, dull, ever present ache that has no fleshly reason to exist as his shoulder blades turns into something pleasant. He flops onto his stomach, and wonders about the women who have joined their group, who he sees looking at him appreciatively when he’s sat listening intently to Dean’s latest plan.

Now that’s an idea.

But for now, it’s just Cas and his wonderfully shrunken skin and his pile of books. 

Beneath the haze, he ought to feel worse about that, he thinks.


End file.
